Drinking water management: Using Vicia faba as an eco-friendly plant-based flocculant for rapid sedimentation of high turbid surface water

Reducing turbidity of river water after heavy rainfall is a challenging step in water treatment plant. Flocculation/coagulation and sedimentation has been well accepted as a feasible approach for addressing this issue at large scale. However, using chemical flocculants might cause secondary pollution at downstream. Therefore, developing eco-friendly plant-based flocculants is essential. In this study. Vicia faba was investigated as a promising plant-based flocculants for efficient removal of turbidity and TSS from river through flocculation/sedimentation process. According to the results adding 100 mg/L of Vicia faba could significantly increase the initial settling velocity of clay from 0.79 to 8.32 mm/s. Consequently, the turbidity removal efficiency remarkably improved as 80% removal efficiency was achieved within 5 min. Moreover, the pH adjustment experiments results revealed that Vicia faba had better performance under acidic condition. The highest turbidity removal efficiency of 85% was archived under pH of 5 and Vicia dosage of 50 mg/L. Our finding suggested a promising, environmentally friendly and cost effective approach form turbiduty removal from surface water.

Drinking water management: Using Vicia faba as an eco-friendly plant-based flocculant for rapid sedimentation of high turbid surface water Keywords:

Turbidity , Vicia faba , Water treatment , Sedimentation , Flocculent